Second time’s the charm – Camp NaNoWriMo victory

Camp NaNoWriMo came to a close once more on Wednesday, and I am very pleased to say that I was able to join the celebrations around the Winners’ Campfire this time around. After almost falling victim to crippling procrastination even before I had typed a single word in the first week, I can’t tell you how happy it made me to be able to type the title of this post just now. Looking back on my daily word count totals I can safely say that there was very little consistency in how much I was writing each day, but my entire efforts in winning this month were kept alive thanks to a few big-scoring days, the largest of which was 5,755 words.

My final word count for the month stands at 50,169, which I validated on the Camp NaNoWriMo website after my final late-night writing session at 1:34 AM on July 31st. Celebrations were heard in my cabin once more just two hours later as another of my cabin mates crossed the finish line. Funnily enough their total word count was just 9 words away from mine. Very strong performances were seen elsewhere, as two of my other cabin mates past the 70,000 word milestone and one made it past 60,000. Unfortunately, one of our cabin mates never joined in the fun, but of the seven of us taking part five made it to our 50,000 word goal, typing up a grand total of 322,482 words in the process.

Now we have welcomed August into our lives the mission of continuing my novel presents itself. I know I still have so much more to write, and, if asked, would give a rough estimate that I will finish the story in the region of 100,000-120,000 words. I would love to continue to work on it in the coming months (albeit, probably a little slower than I have been) so I can have it in a near-completed state by the time we get to November. When November arrives I will once again be joining three of my cabin mates on this great adventure we call NaNoWriMo. One less novel idea trapped in my mind should, in theory, make it easier to see what lies beyond the revolver-wielding cavemen and curious alien visitors that remain to pick out my next tale. I’ll let you know if that is true sometime in October.

Once my current novel reaches a stage I’m happy with I’d love to put it on here alongside its November predecessor. Hopefully they will learn to get along despite having almost nothing in common, right down to a complete lack of Medieval siege engines planned in my newest effort. (Seriously, I don’t even know where I could squeeze one in.)

If you took part in Camp NaNoWriMo I hope you had as much fun as I did. The experience of being placed in small chat groups turned out to be much more enjoyable than I initially thought it would be at the start of the month. It’s made me wish that the main NaNoWriMo had a similar structure, but at the same time it’s neat that these events have a unique feel to the main event in November.

Thanks as always for reading, and I hope you have a great weekend. My family bought a new car earlier this week (a Mitsubishi Delica) so I’m looking forward to have a test drive in that later on today when I visit my grandparents.